


On His Tombstone

by flitterflutterfly



Category: Die Hard (Movies)
Genre: Character Death, Character Study, M/M, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-15
Updated: 2013-02-15
Packaged: 2017-11-29 10:11:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/685777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flitterflutterfly/pseuds/flitterflutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every story has its end and every hero their happily never-after. And every love their way of picking up the pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On His Tombstone

**Author's Note:**

> For the Die Hard Quips and Quotes Challenge in the sexy_right lj comm.
> 
> _“On your tombstone it should read, ‘Always in the wrong place at the wrong time.’” – Thomas Gabriel_
> 
> _“How about, “Yippi-kay-ay, motherfucker.” – John McClane_
> 
> _~Die Hard 4.0_

There are days when Matt has a hard time remembering the details of the fire sale. Those are sometimes the worst days, and sometimes the best. On those days, he tells himself that he’d getting old, that it’s okay to forget, and then he remembers that, well shit, he’s only in his forties and at forty John McClane was still out there kicking some terrorist ass.

John kicked terrorist ass until the day he went on mandatory bed rest. He didn’t last even two months coped up in the hospital for his long list of stressed bones and organs before he somehow heard news of a presidential assassination and became a fucking hero for the last fucking time.

Matt knows there is bitterness when he thinks of this, because yeah the president was saved, but he would have at least liked the chance to say one final goodbye. He knows that’s selfish of him, but John had always said that even after his speckled hair had turned completely grey, he would still be a kid.

What he wouldn’t give to hear John’s voice telling him that instead of just this echo in his mind. He could even imagine how the conversation would go:

“You still mourning for me, kid? What a damn waste.”

“You fucker, it’s your fault. Twenty years without you, twenty years with, I figure I’ve got another twenty years without before I join you again.”

Of course, then John would say something witty and too-damned perfect and Matt would fall apart.

John always had a way of making him fall apart. From the moment they’d first met and he decided, yeah this guy I should trust because if I do he’ll save my life, to the moment the hospital called with news that Mr. McClane had escaped from underneath the supposedly watchful eyes of their staff.

He hates those days when he looks back and tries to remember the Asian chick’s face when John blasted the wall with a van and he can’t place it right. But he hates more the days when he does remember, when he can feel the terror of his apartment exploding, smell the scent of blood and smoke as surely as if it was in the room with him. Because those days are a reminder of all that he had gained, and then all that he’d lost.

“Jack came to visit today. With his boyfriend,” Matt’s lips twitched as he folded his legs under him and sat down in a very familiar spot on dark green grass. “Just so you know, gay hasn’t proven to be genetic.”

He imagined what John’s horrified-proud-horrified look would have been had he opened the door to Jack, his arm around a ridiculously attractive Russian diplomat, his eyes just daring his father to say anything untoward. The thought made Matt laugh aloud in the quiet cemetery.

“Lucy tried to get Holly to move into assisted living, but she won’t budge. Sometimes I think you two were better off siblings than married,” Matt snorted. “Convoluted family. McClane-Gennaro. You know, I thought they would leave me alone after-”

He cleared his throat, staring at the gravemarker in front of him. JOHN MCCLANE, it read.

Sometimes he woke up at night reaching wildly for a body that wasn’t there. For the safety and security of arms that could no longer hold him tight and a voice that wasn’t able to whisper in his hair, to tell him that it would all be okay.

“Okay?” Matt murmured.

Warlock said that John ruined him. Said he’d never be able to have his happily-fucking-after now. He said it with a bit of regret in his tone, as if Matt’s happiness was something he could have lived vicariously through when childhood cancer facilitated the need to create an underground basement, when the need to be close to the help of his mother should a possibly fatal asthma attack hit unexpectedly prevented ever leaving the safe haven that became a prison.

“Lucy asked me if I could go back, if I could change it, if I would,” Matt told the grave.

Change what? If he didn’t do the algorithm for Gabriel, then someone else would do it and he would have never been in the position to stop the fire sale. He would have never met John. Maybe he could change that night two weeks after it all had blown over where he’d made a clumsy, drunken pass at the man old enough to be his father and yet who’d become more important to him than anyone had before.

How could he even dream of giving up the life he’d built with John? It was unthinkable, untouchable, impossible to imagine a world where John didn’t leave his dirty clothes on the floor, talk with his mouth full during dinner, or spend late hours at the office until Matt was ready to break in the PD and drag him out.

Wasn’t that where he was now?

“No,” Matt said firmly.

Because he still had his memories. When they were there for him. The memory of John’s laugh and his smiles. The smile that said “Hey, asshole, go burn in hell,” and the one that said “You’re a fucking idiot,” and the one that Matt only ever saw once in a blue moon, the one that said “I love you,” even when the words didn’t.

How could Holly had ever left John, if he’d given her that smile?

The wind picked up and pulled at Matt’s shaggy hair, blowing strands into his eyes. He pushed them back behind his ear, annoyed, and his fingers itched for a keyboard. The FBI had sent him another project and his plans had been running on loop in the back of his head all through Jack’s visit, but here was not the time. John, even the aching absence of John, deserved his whole attention in a way Matt had rarely given him before.

John would have smacked him if he’d heard that thought. “You don’t ever have to change for me, Mattie,” he would say. “I don’t give two fucks about your computer shit, but that don’t mean that I don’t want you to do what makes you happy.” He would have broken off halfway through the last word, embarrassed to be caught being sentimental. The next day, he would have stayed an hour longer on the streets handcuffing muggers and talking down shooters like he always seemed to find, but Matt would have had those words to keep him company and he would have been content.

He wondered when the words stopped being enough. Because they weren’t, not now. He would have John back mute, deaf, blind, if only to have the weight of his body pressing down on him again.

Touch-starved, his FBI-mandated psychologist said. Get a new boyfriend, girlfriend, fuck-buddy. That was Warlock’s advice.

That would have been John’s advice, had he been able to give it.

Matt shook his head, reaching forward almost absentmindedly to right the flowers that Lucy had left leaning against John’s tombstone. His fingers moved from the blossoms to the engraved words, running over John’s name and then down to the saying underneath. It was so inappropriate, Matt thought, for a public cemetery.

But how could America tell John no after all that he’d done for this damn country?

“I’ll be back later,” Matt promised. “Maybe next week.”

He’d be back tomorrow and John, if he was watching, listening, would know it. But he stayed only for an hour at most, like he’d promised Lucy at the funeral dressed in black, in shock, in despair.

“I love you,” Matt said. Like he always did. The “I miss you,” was stuck on his lips, but he never let it out because John wouldn’t want to know that, even though he had to know anyways. John would want him to move on.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t realized that John would die before him, the age difference had said that. And sure, John had probably assumed that Matt would move on, eventually.

Not a chance, Matt thought. You took my heart with you, John McClane, it died the minute you stepped in front of that bullet with all of America watching and the president calling your name.

But he would never say that, he would let his psychologist prescribe her medicine and Warlock hope and Jack send him on blind dates and Lucy kiss him and then cry. He would walk her down the aisle one day, he thought, in the place John would have and hand her off to a man that he and Jack had both interrogated in the proper McClane fashion, but until then he would smile and tell them that he was okay.

“Okay,” he repeated, standing. His knees groaned, but he ignored them like John had always ignored his injuries and he took a deep breath and turned and walked away, back to an empty house with only the whirl of the computers to keep him from staring at the bed that was too big for one.

“Yippi-kay-ay,” Matt said. “I’m okay.” He laughed out a bitter sort of sob and shook his head. “I’m okay.”

**JOHN MCCLANE**

**1957 – 2023**

**“YIPPI-KAY-AY MOTHERFUCKER”**


End file.
